Jonathan Kellerman - The Conspiracy Club

Jeremy shrugged and started to walk around the detective. Doresh blocked him. Feinted with his head- a game-cock maneuver- as if about to strike. Jeremy fell back reflexively, lost his balance, took hold of a pew.

Doresh laughed and left the chapel.

Jeremy waited until he was certain Doresh wasn’t coming back before locking the door to the chapel, sinking into a rear pew, and burying his face in his hands.

Not Dirgrove. I’ve been wasting my time and now another woman…

Always wrong, always fucking wrong.

How could it be? Everything fit so elegantly. Tools, lasers, like father like son. Dirgrove a sexual predator, manipulative. Definitely in England when the English girls were slaughtered and the English girls fit, they had to, that’s why Langdon and Shreve had perked up their ears, why Shreve had called Doresh, and Doresh had paid Jeremy a visit.

I’ve never been to England! Why can’t Doresh see that, the ass!

The polygraph would clear him, everything they did would clear him, but meanwhile more women…

WRONG.

That meant Arthur was wrong, too. The postcards, the envelopes, the entire fucking tutorial the old man had shoved in his…

Arthur.

A terrible thought- a horrific atheism- seized him.

Arthur, surveyor of death. Connossieur of the grisly story, game player, par excellence.

Arthur, student of war strategy.

He’d known for some time that the old man had been manipulating him but had endowed the gambit with noble intentions.

Arthur. Enjoyed working with death, used a morgue van for spare wheels- the vehicle that had followed him had been large. An SUV, he’d thought. But why not a van?

The man dissected. Dug with a garden spade… no, no way. The pathologist was too old. Old men, stripped of testosterone and dreams just didn’t do things like that.

Besides, Arthur had been on the other side of violence, a victim- the ordeal.

His family slaughtered.

An unsolved triple murder.

Arthur with no alibi, driving to the cabin at the time the fire was set.

Arthur taking years to move out of the family home. Living with ghosts.

Ghosts he’d created?

No, impossible, intolerable. The old man was eccentric but not a monster- Arthur being a monster would mean the other CCC people- no, they were victims, all of them. Had endured their own ordeals, nobility through suffering.

Arthur was an odd man but a good man. Jeremy’s avatar, guiding him toward inexorable truths.

And yet, the old man had led him straight down the wrong path.

I couldn’t have miscalculated that badly.

If I did, I’m finding another line of work. Plumbing, bricklaying, motel clerk at a sleazy hot-bed palace. Better yet, I’ll ship out on one of those trawlers that hauls in crabs and bottom feeders and gasping whitefish.

Like father…

Why had Arthur done this to him?

He sat up, bared his face, caught an eyeful of stained plastic.

Then it hit him- a seizure of bowel-tightening, grandiose insight that made everything… right!

He jumped to his feet, ran toward the chapel door. As he lunged for the lock, his pager went off.

“Dr. Carrier, this is Nancy, the charge nurse on Four East. I’ve got a patient here, a Mrs. Van Alden, one of Dr. Schuster’s, she’s scheduled for an LP, says you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago to help her through it. We’re kind of waiting…”

“I got held up by an emergency. I’ll be there right away.”

“Good. She looks pretty uptight.”

He hurried to the elevators, eyes downward, wondering, How am I going to fake it?

As he rode up to Four, he checked his appointment book.

Nine more patients, booked consecutively, each one needy. Not counting Doug, and he knew he’d be expected to check in on Doug again; Christ, the poor kid deserved it.

After his clinical duties were over, a Psychiatry case conference. That he could skip, but there was no avoiding the people who depended on him.

Ten patients, no breaks in between because he’d compressed his schedule. Wanting more time for night work, and now he was paying for it.

Windmill work; tilting with a broken lance.

The elevator door opened on ward noise. Mrs. Van Alden needed him, she’d be okay, he’d help her through it.

He’d get through the day, somehow.

A pretty cool fellow.

Right?

Back in his office, short of breath from running, the sounds of the day- pain cries, weeping, sighs of resignation, gushes of gratitude- buried deeply in some dark, little, crumb-littered vest pocket of his brain.

He went straight for the book- there it was, lying atop the Curiosity file.

The Blood Runs Cold. Mr. Colin Pugh exploiting very, very bad behavior.

A book sold by Renfrew. Of course, had to be, that made sense, the world remained logical…

Flipping feverishly to the final chapter, he turned pages so quickly that the acid-damaged paper flaked, and dust flew off in all directions.

There it was:

Gerd Degraav enters Brazil using a Syrian passport.

Remarried, with a child.

Another son.

Here?

Arthur leading him… that day in the cafeteria. The other man, the dark-haired surgeon with the mustache who’d been sitting with Dirgrove and Mandel as Arthur stared.

The man Jeremy had seen arguing with Dirgrove. The two of them, evenly matched, same height, same build. Teeth bared like fighting dogs…

A second son, born in Syria. Part-Mideastern, part-German- the coloring fit.

It was the dark man, not Dirgrove, whom Arthur had focused on.

Had to be, had to be, let me be right … Jeremy yanked open the bottom desk drawer, grabbed the Attending Staff face book, and began with the D’s , because, like Dirgrove, this one had probably changed his name and hopefully, like his half brother, he’d stayed alphabetically close.

He hadn’t.

Jeremy turned back to the A’s, scanned every photo in the book. His own image stared back at him blankly- a picture taken shortly after Jocelyn. Lord, I look shell-shocked.

The dark, mustachioed doctor was nowhere to be found.

A white-coat, a surgeon, but not on staff at City Central?

Mandel would know. Jeremy phoned the cardiologist’s office, was informed Dr. Mandel was on vacation.

“Where?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” said the secretary.

“This is Dr. Carrier.”

“Is it a patient emergency?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Rhinegold’s taking emergency call for Dr. Mandel.”

“I need to speak with Dr. Mandel, personally.”

“I’m sorry-”

“Please.”

“What I was about to say, Doctor, was that even if I wanted to reach Dr. Mandel, I couldn’t. He’s backpacking with his family out in Colorado and doesn’t have a phone. He made a big point of that. No phone, for three days. He really deserves to get away.”

“What hotel is he staying at?”

“Doctor,” she said, “maybe I didn’t make myself clear. He’s camping . Out in the middle of nowhere .”

“Is there a physician in your department, forty or so, dark complexion, dark mustache?”

“No,” she said. “Are you all right, Dr. Carrier?”

Not knowing where else to go, he phoned Dirgrove’s office.

Hey, Ted, long time, no see. By the way, what’s the name of your homicidal sib? And what did he do to irritate you the other day?

Had the argument between Dirgrove and his brother been about something of substance? Did Dirgrove suspect?

The surgeon’s phone rang five times before Jeremy was connected to voice mail.